Power of pursuation/example/recommendation

We plan to invite about 130 teachers to the portal and I'd like to make a little experiment on this. The idea is to show two different examples of how to access and discover learning resources on the portal, and see whether that has an influence on

• Uptake: users sign up
• Retention: users come back
• Different ways to discover resources (social cues vs. conventional search strategies)
  
• Focus on the system (discovery e.g. clicking on resources vs. contributing, e.g. bookmark and tag, rate, etc)

The point would be to test the statement from the results reported in Harper et al (2007), where an email newsletter with manipulated social comparison made no difference to a member's interest in using the system, but it changed their focus within the system.

While subjects who received an email message with the comparison manipulation were no more likely to click on one of the links or log in to the system, they were more likely to rate movies.

There are differences, but in grosso modo the idea has similarities: In Harper et al (2007) the manipulated social information in the email concerned the subject him/herself (treatment group), whereas in my case the information would be about some other teachers that the subjects would be able to relate with (e.g. see favourites from a science or language teacher). The biggest difference would be that there is no comparison aspect of the subject's performance to the other users in the system, which was one of the central features of Harper et al study.

Study design

The randomly selected treatment group would receive an invitation with set goals of expectations on the use of the portal. Examples will be given on how to access and discover learning resources based on social navigation cues, show examples of how to browse other user's Favourites and how to access resources through a tag cloud.

The randomly selected control group will receive an invitation with set goals of expectations on the use of the portal. Examples will be given on how to access and discover learning resources would receive an invitation where examples would be given on how to access and discover learning resources based on conventional free text search or browsing keywords
(to be reworked, just initial ideas based on tracking methods that I could use).

• Immediate reaction: number of people who access the portal through the direct links on the invitation as opposed to the number of people who access the portal though the main page. the time these people spend on the portal on the first time and how they search, how many searches they execute and how many resources they click on
• Uptake: is there difference between the groups on signing up on the portal?
• Retention: on the longer run, say, within a month, do they still come back
• Different ways to discover resources (social cues vs. conventional search strategies)
  
• Focus on the system (discovery vs. contributing in terms of ratings, tagging, etc) : do people who see examples of social navigation use these methods more than the control group? are there any differences how many resources the subjects in both groups tag and rate?

Hypothesis to test
(to be reworked, just basic ideas)

hypotheses would be that subjects in the treatment group will discover more resources than the control due to social navigation cues made readily available to them. By discovering I mean that they click on these resources on the portal to view them. I also would hypothesise that the retention rate is better among the treatment group, as they get a direct access to selected resources whereas the control group has to look for the interesting resources and might get diverted there.

Relevant studies in this direction, to be completed

A study towards this direction was reported by Harper et al (2007). They study the effect of email newsletters that told the community members whether their contribution was above or below average. They report that a) previous studies has shown that information about social norms can affect contributions, e.g. people recycled more material when they were provided with information about how much other people had recycled (Schultz, 1999).


Social Comparisons to Motivate Contributions to an Online Community., Harper, F.; Li, X.; Chen, Y.; Konstan, J. , Persuasive Technology, 26/04/2007, Palo Alto, CA, (2007)

Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities, Ling, K.; Beenen, G.; Ludford, P.; Wang, X.; Chang, K.; Li, X.; Cosley, D.; Frankowski, D.; Terveen, L.; Rashid, A.M.; Resnick, P.; Kraut, R. , Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 10, Issue 4, (2005)

Changing Behavior With Normative Feedback Interventions: A Field Experiment on Curbside Recycling (1999)

by P Schultz